In my original typology of the wendy house spelling mistakes I noted that I wasn’t making any phonological replacements. Accurately spelt, real, words that sound the same as the intended word but have a different spelling. I’ve branched out into a full set of all currently know typographical errors, examples of phonological replacements include:

Local councils are phasing out the use of apostrophes because they are complicated, confusing (to GPS units), messy and generate too many complaints.

In January 2009 the Daily Telegraph reports that Birmingham city council has updated their street name signs to remove apostrophes. From now on, no sign produced by Birmingham City Council will contain the punctuation mark. Debates over whether Kings Norton really should be King’s – or even Kings’ – Norton may rage on, but they will be useless. And nearby Druids Heath – which was never actually home to one, let alone many, druids – will never take on the possessive, no matter how furious local apostrophe advocates become

In February 2009 the Yorkshire evening post reported that Wakefield council dropped apostrophies from its roadsigns.

In March 2009 the BBC reported that Bristol City is removing apostrophes from public road signs. “Bristol City Council says the ban makes the road signs look “neater” and argues that if capitals are used then apostrophes should not be… …Roger Mortimer, from the Cotham and Redland Amenities Society, says residents are keen to keep the threatened apostrophes. “I think it is an example of just ignoring the English language. Punctuation is extremely important and the apostrophe is very valuable – it gives you a sense of place.”

The founder of the apostrophy protection society is quite upset. He mentiones that ‘thiscould be the first step towards linguistic anarchy’ . I wonder whether he knows about text messaging?

The colonies find this a bit amusing. 3 News (New Zealand) wittily reports that: “the Queen’s English is now the Queens English. England’s second-largest city has decided to drop apostrophes from all its street signs, saying they are confusing and old-fashioned. But some purists are downright possessive about the punctuation mark.”

Imagine a Monty Python sketch with the team in suits and ties passionately discussing the value of the apostrophy in avoiding linguistic anarchy. Lots of arm and leg waving, diagrams and charts. Terry Jones demonstrating what total linguistic anarchy sounds like…. …and its impact on your sense of place… which probably involves falling over.

Meanwhile the Times reports that councils are publishing crib sheets to help their staff work-out where to put apostrophes for the rare occassions when they are allowed.

This post is dedicated to my many tolerant readers who refrain from correcting my spelling, typing and gramatical aberations despite the irritation and distress this causes them.

On occasions I can be found behaving with wreckless abandon and inconsideration to all kinds of minority and differently-challenged individuals and subcultures.

For example, while wandering the streets of Teddington, without any warning or the aid of safety equipment, I started smirking at this shop name. Any sign that is declaring the bodily activities of people potentially originating from Gascony can prompt me to display potentially confusing or offensive behaviours.

Feeling pleased with myself for first discovering how to create a useful survey in Microsoft Office Sharepoint 2003, then created one, I finally sent a link out to some colleagues asking for feedback on the survey content.

Colleague: Do you want feedback on all the typing, spelling, grammar and spacing errors?

The words ‘wind’ and ‘sails’, (or sales), with a liberal dose of ‘removed’ colons; semi-colons, commas and apostrophes galloped around my mind as I wondered whether ‘discrete personal editorial coaches’ is a job description gaining momentum in the service industry …

In October my facebook friends no longer described me as predominantly arrogant and mouthy, Hoorah!

They have found that my frequent unveiling of yellow wonky teeth is my main virtue. Needless to say, I don’t count any US Dentists amongst my friends.

Obviously I could survive on a desert island without panicking about the lack of a dental floss and could focus on the more fun stuff like some serious splashing in the sea, exploring, then bedtime with a drop of fermented coconut milk and lashings of ‘goodnight John-Boy’, ‘goodnight Mary-Ellen’ Waltonesque politeness.

The total omission of the category ‘worst speller’ is because the Facebook applet does not compare people on this dimension. Otherwise I’m sure creative speller would be up there amongst my top virtues. While I’m considering this I’ll have half a dozen a cups of tea because I surely can drink a lot of tea, as indeed my friends conscientiously observe.

Then in November my wonky teeth got knocked off the top slot by my outstanding manners with new entries replacing adventurous and best companion on a desert island with loyal and dateable. In the light of my repatriation this all makes good sense because while the UK is an island, it is not a desert, and returning to the UK can be viewed more as native loyalty than adventerousness. Dateable? Hmmmm…. this is questionable on the grounds that no-one has actually managed to achieve a ‘date’ in 2007.

A person called Yusuf wants to buy my unnecessary stuff. Yusuf has also offered me a highly paid job and to print my craigslist advertisements. I just need to give him my banking details first. Gosh! I’m so lucky to be offered all these things, thanks Yusuf.

After christmas I found this note from my 6yr old niece tucked in the cover of a book I’d been reading. It now marks a poem drawing parallels between life and staying on a hospital ward where we do not make our beds but we do lie in them by Roger McGough in his book “The way things are”.

The note cleverly demonstrates that the word haseahoase house, unlike home, is terribly tricky to spell. Probably because there are three of those infamously tricky vowels conglomerating in ‘house’.

This post might be deep and meaningful. It might not be. This post maybe “PMT treatment #2″ mascerading as miss-spelt, miss-placed, confusionisim… … a desperateness and peacefulness meeting in a moment, shared..

none! tee-hee, you weren’t expecting that now were you? Neither was I!

8. Doouble letter score (updated to add this category on 9th Dec 2006 after watching a presentation with the following typo’s)

grrew (grew)

quantiitatively (quantitatively)

thee (the)

Using the spell-checker effectively and proof reading do not rank highly as core Wendy skills. Lack of an example of a phonological replacements (e.g. replacing there with their) is an extremely unusual omission from this week’s emails. Falling-over and making a good English style cuppa tea are, by contrast, core Wendy skills.

Is it time for some editorial reform? This month even my adorable readers are politely REVOLTING:

Geek: “How did you manage to write your doctoral thesis?”

Wendy: “it was referred for editorial re-writes based on my inconsistent use of apostrophe s“

EnglishTeacher: “I d’ont mind spelling so much as the apostrophe’s in the wrong place ´s. It drive’s me mad !! Ill just help you with one thing if I may – apostrophe’s are not for plural’s. Please correct thi’s paragraph by putting apostrophe’s in the right place’s and taking out the one’s which arent s’upposed to be there.

To check if I could actually apply the apostrophe s rules I tried this self-test.